Icons aren’t religious art. They’re theology you can see.
When we write icons, and we do say “write,” not paint, we’re doing something closer to composing Scripture than decorating a church. An icon makes visible what we believe about Christ, the saints, and the world God is transfiguring. It’s a theological statement in color and gold leaf.
The Incarnation Changed Everything
Here’s the foundation: God became man. The Word took flesh. And when that happened, the invisible God became visible in the face of Jesus Christ.
Before the Incarnation, the Old Testament strictly forbade making images of God. You couldn’t depict what you couldn’t see. But Christ changed that. St. John of Damascus, the great defender of icons during the iconoclast controversies, put it plainly: “I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake.” When God took a human body, that body could be depicted. The Incarnation makes iconography possible.
This isn’t just theory. It’s why the iconoclasts, those who wanted to destroy icons, were actually attacking the reality of the Incarnation itself. If you say you can’t depict Christ, you’re saying He wasn’t really, fully human. The Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 settled this. The bishops declared that icons are not only permissible but necessary, because they bear witness to the truth that God truly became one of us.
Windows, Not Walls
We call icons “windows to heaven,” and that’s not just a nice phrase. An icon isn’t a picture of a saint the way your driver’s license is a picture of you. It’s a meeting place. When you stand before an icon of St. Michael the Archangel here in our parish, you’re not looking at a painting of someone who died centuries ago. You’re standing in the presence of someone who’s alive in Christ right now.
The style of icons reflects this. They don’t use Western perspective or try to look photographic. The reverse perspective, the gold backgrounds, the stylized features, all of this points beyond naturalism to the transfigured reality of the Kingdom. Icons show us people and events as they truly are in God’s sight, not as they merely appear to our physical eyes.
Veneration, Not Worship
Let’s be clear about what we’re doing when we kiss an icon or light a candle before it. We’re not worshipping the wood and paint. We’re not treating the icon as some kind of magical object.
The honor we show passes through the image to the person depicted. When I kiss the icon of Christ, I’m kissing Christ. When I bow before an icon of the Theotokos, I’m honoring Mary. The Seventh Ecumenical Council used precise language here: we offer veneration (Greek: proskynesis) to icons, but we reserve worship (Greek: latreia) for God alone.
This is the same distinction we make when we ask the saints to pray for us. We’re not treating them as gods. We’re communing with them as living members of the Body of Christ. Your Baptist relatives might struggle with this, and that’s okay. It takes time to understand that the Church includes both the living and the dead, and that an icon is one way we stay connected to that fuller reality.
Writing Icons Is Prayer
Iconographers don’t just sit down with brushes and start painting whatever inspires them. Icon writing is a liturgical act. It requires prayer, fasting, and preparation. Many iconographers go to confession before beginning a new icon. They pray at each stage of the work. The process itself is meant to be an act of communion with God and with the saint being depicted.
And there are rules. Canonical guidelines govern how Christ is depicted, how the saints are shown, what colors mean, how biblical scenes are composed. This isn’t about stifling creativity. It’s about keeping iconography theological rather than merely personal. An icon isn’t self-expression. It’s the Church’s faith made visible.
Not Just Decoration
If you walk into most Protestant churches in Beaumont, you’ll see maybe a cross, perhaps some banners, possibly a painting of Jesus in the foyer. If you walk into a Catholic church, you’ll see statues and paintings, often in a realistic Renaissance style. Walk into an Orthodox church and you’re surrounded by icons, on the walls, on the iconostasis, carried in procession, venerated by the faithful.
This isn’t decoration. It’s ecclesiology. The icons remind us that we’re never worshipping alone. We’re always surrounded by that “great cloud of witnesses” Hebrews talks about. The saints are here with us. The angels are here with us. Heaven and earth meet in the liturgy, and the icons make that meeting visible.
When you’re standing in church on a Sunday morning, tired from your week at the refinery, struggling to focus, and you look up and see the icon of Christ Pantocrator gazing back at you, that’s not just art. That’s an encounter. That’s theology you can see, and it’s changing you whether you realize it or not.
Fr. Thomas Hopko used to say that icons are part of how we’re being saved. Not because they’re magic, but because they draw us into the reality of the Kingdom. They teach us to see the world as God sees it. And in that seeing, we’re transformed.
If you’ve never venerated an icon, start simply. Come to church a few minutes early. Stand before the icon of Christ at the front. Cross yourself. Kiss the icon. Ask Him to teach you to see.
